Spring
Out in Merced County, a little more than twenty miles from Los Banos, there is a thermal spring that carries no name beyond Spring. The water measured tepid, in the low eighties, which is cooler than a bath. Ownership is unrecorded, and so is public access. Treat it as unverified.
Roughly five hundred feet separate the water from a road the record leaves nameless, and you cover that on foot. Low country, dry, a bit over a thousand feet above sea level. Rain comes to something like eleven inches across the year and snow never shows up at all. The yearly mean temperature lands in the low sixties.
December through February suit it best according to the record. With water in the low eighties, a winter dip will feel cool fast. There is no campground listed nearby and no fee information. Before you go, find out who owns the land, since nothing on file says it is open to the public.
Aircraft with laser scanners measured this ground to within inches. The scan strips out trees and buildings, leaving the bare shape of the land around Spring.
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the northwest.
- Highest ground nearby
- 396 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northwest
A slice through the ground from northwest to southeast, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 17% of the springs on this site.
Heat flow measures the warmth working its way up through the ground from deep inside the earth. Where it runs high, rain and snowmelt that seep down through cracks in the rock come back up hot.
See every spring on the geothermal heat map →
Heat flow estimate: Stanford Thermal Earth Model (Aljubran & Horne, 2024), CC BY 4.0.
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Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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